


These Things Are Your Becoming

by Aris Merquoni (ArisTGD)



Category: Babylon 5, Dear Sugar - Cheryl Strayed
Genre: Advice Column, Epistolary, F/M, Gen, Yuletide, Yuletide 2012
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2012-12-25
Updated: 2012-12-25
Packaged: 2017-11-22 09:03:24
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 4
Words: 2,310
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/608112
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ArisTGD/pseuds/Aris%20Merquoni
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff"><p>Dear Sugar is an advice column written (formerly anonymously) by Cheryl Strayed. The archives are online at The Rumpus: http://therumpus.net/sections/dear-sugar/</p></blockquote>





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

  * For [jinxed_wood](https://archiveofourown.org/users/jinxed_wood/gifts).



_Dear Sugar,_

_Okay, I feel a bit like an idiot writing to you. I'm not the kind of person who has relationship crises. I have work crises, I have political crises, I have..._

_Let me start over._

_There's this man. He's--yes, attractive. Yes, attentive without being overbearing. Yes, funny and charming and witty, and yes, I could see myself having sex with him._

_And part of the problem is that I feel like I don't have anything to offer him. I've broken myself open on that wall before. The last time I finally opened up to a real relationship, she left--it wasn't exactly her fault, but she hurt me, hurt a lot of other people, and hurt herself. I've lost so many people over the last few years, I just can't imagine asking for anything more._

_And yet. And yet, Sugar, I don't know. Maybe I don't know because I'm lonely, or because it's been over a year since I've been laid, or because he keeps showing up and... and being nice to me._

_I guess I just need someone to tell me what I already know. Should I go for it? Should I ignore it? Should I declare myself a hermit and buy a chastity belt? I'm busy, I don't have time for dating, but yet. Here he is._

_Lost (in Space)_

Dear Lost,

I was fifteen when I lost my first boyfriend. He was tall and handsome, a whole year older than me, with wide green eyes and wavy hair that made him look like an elf. He snuck me chocolates that he stole from his mother's candy store and held hands with me after school. I was dazzlingly in love with him, superhot scintillating supernova love, love that bubbled over and turned the rest of my life to color as though before meeting him it had been black and white. Have you seen The Wizard of Oz? Not the recent one with Marie Renard and Sam Ransome, the original with Judy Garland, and that fantastic scene where all of a sudden the whole world of Oz is glorious, gaudy technicolor. That's how his love felt, sweet pea, like I'd been over the rainbow. I would have turned the whole world upside down for him. That's how you love when you're fifteen, isn't it? As though nobody has ever been in love before you.

It was three months into this life-changing ever-and-ever love when I was fifteen when he announced, quite suddenly, in front of all his friends, that he hadn't meant a word of it. That he had never loved me, that he was stringing me along as a joke, that I was stupid and pathetic and worthless. I didn't date again for years, and when I did I was so full of self-doubt that I sabotaged us before we could even get started, using all the worst weapons of words I knew on myself before she could get there first, and eventually leaving before she could hurt me.

But it's that first lost love that I think about, Lost, when I read your letter, not all the rest that followed. It's always the first time we love someone that shines the brightest, isn't it? And always the first time we lose that hurts the most?

I see a huge set of scales in my mind's eye, Lost, and on one side I see you heaping all of your big tender shiny-terrified LOVE, and on the other your painful miserable frightened-angry HURT, and you stepping back to see which way the scales will fall. As though your heart should be ruled by the weight of what has happened to you. The ancient Egyptians believed that when we die, our heart gets weighed against the feather of Ma'at, and if our heart has anything heavy in it, our soul is cast into the abyss. Can you imagine that? Weighing all of that loss, all of that pain, all of those things you carry in your heart, against one tiny feather?

I'm here to tell you a secret, Lost. All of those things that you're weighing against each other, all of those lovers you're carrying around with you, all of that pain that you're still experiencing, all of it is actually feather-light. It's you who are giving it mass and weight, allowing yourself the drag. You're in pain, sweet pea, pain from the woman who cut you down and the stress you're not giving yourself permission to talk about, but it's not the pain holding you back. It's not your history that is weighing down that scale. It's only you. Your hands are holding on to the feeling of rejection and grief. But you'll never be able to move past that grief and loss until you can reach out and let yourself be loved by other people. And you can't open your hands until you let go.

Let go, Lost. Let yourself be found.


	2. Chapter 2

_Dear Sugar,_

_How delightful! I have just become apprised of of your advice column and find it absolutely astonishing. Human inventions have always tickled my fancy, as they say, and I find this idea most fanciful. I mulled over sending a missive to your paper for several hours before I decided to write in to see if you could help me with a particular problem._

_Centauri marriages are arranged by our families for political advantages between our Houses. I have three wives myself, all of whom were foisted on me by outsiders. And now I have been granted, by the grace of our Emperor, a divorce from two of them._

_My question is this, Sugar. How do I choose between the three of them? Which one should I keep beside me, spending my money and trading on my good name? What criterion do humans suggest to divest oneself from interfering matrimony?_

_Married and Merry_

Dear Married,

If you care so little for these women, perhaps you should just flip a coin? Rather, you should flip a coin six times, in order to conduct a proper double-elimination bracket. It's the only fair way.

Do you see into your own heart, sweet pea? How small it is? How little regard for these women, these wives, who even if they are your political adversaries are bound to you, do you have that you have no idea which one you would choose to marry if given the opportunity tomorrow?

I have been married twice myself, for love, both times. I left my first husband because of a crushing weight in my chest when I thought about staying married to him. Is that how you feel about all of your wives, Married? Does each of them make you want to run to the other end of the galaxy? Do none of them bring you any joy, even companionship? If there were political advantage to one over the other, I have the feeling you would have made your decision already.

Look beyond the obvious, sweet pea. Look at that pinprick inside you, the golden light that you keep bundled up and secret. Hold your heart up to the three women that you are inextricably connected to and look for the reflection in her eyes. You are not choosing a wife, Married. You're choosing your heart. Trust it.


	3. Chapter 3

_Dear Sugar,_

_How do you tell a woman you love her without putting undue pressure on her? I love a woman--well, I believe I love a woman, I feel as though I love her, I wish to love her--but she wishes to hear none of it. Well, she wishes to hear me, but she apparently wishes not to hear anything romantic from anyone. Is this making any sense? Should I give up, languish without her? Or keep trying? Or keep my mouth shut? What do you think?_

_Romantically Inclined_

Dear Romantic,

The last time I refused to say 'I love you' nearly poisoned me. I was living in a tiny walk-up apartment in a blue house with corrugated iron for a roof halfway between a waste processing plant and mine tailings processing plant on Beta 9 with my boyfriend and two cats we'd saved from the spaceport. We had no money, and every morning we would have to go out and work odd jobs and try to find scraps of food that we could feed to the cats, because any food that was worth spending money on we had to use to feed ourselves. My jobs were coffee girl, tea girl, typing assistant, bookkeeper for a corrupt operation which couldn't afford a real accountant, and rat catcher. The rats went to the cats, mostly.

I loved my boyfriend, and he loved me, but we never let the words pass between us. We held them close to our chests in a frightened, mean way which suggested that we were hiding something other than the words. I wanted the reassurance of an I Love You from him more than I wanted his caresses or the sex or the tiny tin of real salmon he brought home one day, a special treat he'd saved for a week and bought for our anniversary. More than I wanted to be able to feed our cats or buy new sheets or afford to move out of the tiny walk-up apartment in the blue house with corrugated iron for a roof between the waste processing plant and the mine tailings processing plant I wanted him to say 'I Love You' before I said it to him.

How strange it is, this war of words. We think that if we say or don't say something, if we phrase things in the right way or say them at the right time, we can get the result that we think matters. We sift and sort syllables and pauses like grains of sand in a zen garden, then sit and stare at them until the time for saying anything has passed. Silence is safer, we think. I thought so too, until one day I came home to the tiny walk-up apartment to find one of the cats and my boyfriend had left Beta 9, and I never did get the chance to hear or say I Love You, or even argue over which of us got to keep which of the cats.

You aren't keeping from her anything she doesn't already know, Romantic. If the words make her leave, then she was never yours in the first place. If you aren't willing to take no for an answer, not saying it won't change her mind. And if she has been waiting for you, the only thing you're doing is losing her.

Don't let the love unspoken poison you, Romantic. The words only have the power you give them.


	4. Chapter 4

_Dear Sugar,_

_There is a man with whom I have become close friends. It is strange; for what feels like a lifetime we have been enemies. Political enemies, certainly. Beyond that. He has done--his people have done terrible things to mine. My family, my world, my race. He, himself, has made terrible choices for which I and mine have borne the consequences. And yet..._

_Can one forgive someone so terrible? Is it right to be friends with someone with so much blood on his hands? Does it matter if that blood is mine, and I have done him injuries as well?_

_Warrior Poet_

Dear Warrior Poet,

Forgiveness can be a terrible thing. There are people we are connected to, people who are or who have become part of our primal selves, who have done terrible things to us, but who we have to forgive in order to keep going. People who we have to forgive, not because they have repented, but because forgiving them is the only way to release ourselves from the harm they have done to us. Because when we do not, we only allow them to place the burden of their actions on us, to trudge around under for the rest of our days.

It doesn't sound from your letter as though you are trudging, Warrior Poet. Warrior Poet! What a name to choose. You see yourself as someone who can fight and someone who can write. Which of those identities has more pull on you, sweet pea? Which one pulls you stronger? Are you looking to give yourself permission to be enemies again, or to write a new history between the two of you? Forgiving a friend for a terrible thing is harder than forgiving someone you will never see again. It allows leaving yourself open for disappointment. It opens your heart for the knife. But it sounds like you are asking to clarify your position to others, not to yourself. You sound as though you already know how you feel. You aren't asking my permission to forgive your friend; you're asking for permission to say it out loud.

I don't have any friends who I became friends with after they had hurt me. Most of us, I believe, leave people who injure us behind if we have the choice. The kind of forgiveness you're talking about requres trust and commitment--requires either that we be hurt again and again, or that the person we have forgiven has truly changed, and dedicates themselves to remaining changed.

Is there advice I can give you, Warrior Poet? Perhaps not. Perhaps only the truth that people can change, can always surprise us with how beautiful and spectacular they turn out to be. Perhaps the only thing I can suggest is to hold on to hope, but keep your heart guarded. To advise you to write the new history of your friendship, word by word, but trust the warrior in you to keep your heart safe.

I hope your friend has truly changed, Warrior Poet, for your sake if not for his.

**Author's Note:**

> Dear Sugar is an advice column written (formerly anonymously) by Cheryl Strayed. The archives are online at The Rumpus: http://therumpus.net/sections/dear-sugar/


End file.
